Dictionary of Literary Biography on Gertrude Bonnin

Zitkala-Sa was one of the first Native American women among her contemporaries to publish a collection of traditional tribal stories. Her command of English was refined, and her works are characterized by vivid imagery. She did not mince words, and her stories are emotionally charged -- often angry, sometimes strident in directing accusations against white oppression of Indians. With her sense of her audience shaped largely by the Christian missionary schools she attended, her work expresses her discomfort in holding the status of a white-educated Indian, her love for Native American culture, and her concern for Indian self-determination.

Born at the Yankton Sioux Agency in South Dakota, Gertrude Simmons was the third child of Tate I Yohin Win (Reaches for the Wind), a full-blood Dakota, and a white man who left the family before the child's birth. Simmons learned the ways of her tribe until missionaries arrived in...